This invention relates to the irrigation, feeding, and disease treatment/control of individual plants and trees, and as well to different combinations of planting rows, groves, or mixed planting areas of many types.
It has been long recognized that the health of large plantings, landscapes, and trees is always threatened by profound shortages of rain. Many trees die during such periods. Many more are seriously weakened, their lives shortened, and they are much more vulnerable to insects and diseases.
Traditional techniques and prior art are not up to the enormous tasks of watering and irrigating these many millions of national assets adequately during periods of severe drought. A single large tree may transpire many hundreds of gallons a day in moving water up from the ground and out through its leaves. For the numbers of trees involved in many different settings, to replenish these amounts efficiently and frugally seems impossible and many private owners, public parks, and communities can only watch and wait for rain.
Those that try to save their trees and plantings have been essentially limited to the traditional methods of watering that include irrigation by sprinkler or similar spraying systems, hose and surface irrigation, and deep root watering. These prior art techniques all have drawbacks and inefficiencies made manifest in various ways.
Watering by sprinkles usually includes a certain percentage of evaporative loss, often significant, as well as a problem of control of the spray patterns that, on a windy day for example, would result in the water spray drifting over unwanted sections or over covered areas that lead to gutters and drains. Either permanent or temporary installations require piping and maintenance and all installations are sensitive to and dependent on supplied water pressure. Any higher efficiency methods usually used for crops demand large open areas found only in farmland.
Where garden and water hoses are simply laid down and allowed to spread water on the surface near tree trunks and plantings, success is all too often dependent on the slope or grade of the surrounding ground, and excessive runoff into unwanted areas is quite common.
Watering from the top down by these two methods is even more difficult when the ground is compacted, desiccated, and unable to easily absorb water. The problems of wasteful runoff is then magnified, and the tasks become more frustrating.
For either method, the distances covered and the sizes and weights of the hoses that could be handled in the oppressive heat also severely limit the possible coverage and water quantities. Larger hoses can deliver more volume, but then the weight of the hoses requires a truck to help drag those lengths from place to place. So, the compromise of the length and size of the hoses that recognizes and reduces strain and injury to the workers, along with the other logistics of site accessibility and location of water sources, then predetermines the available gallons for irrigation. It will take many hours with smaller hoses to adequately water only a few trees, even without the problems of runoff and evaporation.
Deep root watering has also been used, which is the drilling and injection of water directly into the ground at pressures of 30 psi or more, under the theory that the pressures would "crack" the soil structure and allow the water to diffuse throughout the ground. However, these hollow spikes are more often driven below the actual levels of most of the water-absorptive root systems (the first 6 to 24 inches of soil) and the injected water might not be available to the trees or other plantings because of a kind of "subterranean" runoff. And even this system, which attempts to avoid the problems of the first two methods by being specific and focused in its applications, usually uses only relatively small quantities of water (from 30 to 50 gallons per tree) and is very labor and equipment intensive.
It appears to the inventor that these commonly accepted gallon numbers are as much a product of our admitted inability to supply larger quantities of water as of any real analysis of the actual needs of large and mature trees and plantings. Since we cannot supply, and have never before been expected to supply water to trees and plantings that seemed able to fend for themselves, we innocently lower volume standards and application techniques that might not reflect the true requirements of trees and plantings in crisis.
The absorptive root system of almost all trees is spread out roughly analogous to the extent and circumference of their leafy superstructure, called the crown, and out many feet to the distant edge of the crown, called the drip line. The numerous surfaces of the leaves can catch, slow down, and then drop available rain water easily into this root area. These same roots also provide the structural counterbalance to the aboveground parts of the tree that are heavy with leaves, cantilevered, and subjected to repeated and severe wind stresses. It is reasonable to expect that supplying water to this entire area, and not just near the tree trunk where there are more structural and fewer absorptive roots, and in the quantities of water that are actually recorded as used by the trees, would be the best, most efficient and effective standard of drought irrigation. However, when this intervention is attempted using prior art, the number of trees that could be watered is severely limited.
Two newer methods, drip irrigation and porous buried hoses, that deposit small amounts of water continuously near the root zone, either do not supply the quantities of water needed for large and mature plantings and trees, or require expensive retrofit installations in areas never designed for or expected to require watering.
This present invention also differs significantly from other prior art that may be considered similar in appearance or in similar fields as shown the patents of Nail (U.S. Pat. No. 3,001,207) describing a wading pool; Landry (U.S. Pat. No. 3,808,831) showing a skating rink; Vickery (U.S. Pat. No. 3,933,002) also showing a skating rink; de Pous (U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,473) describing water reservoirs, particularly swimming pools; and Eymard (U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,113) showing an inflatable reservoir for containing a liquid, especially an inflatable swimming pool.
Nail's invention is air inflatable--rising to float on rather than contain any water, it is also required to be of a specific diameter, and has bottom flaps intended to be leak proof. Landry's and Vickery's teachings are limited to ice skating rinks wherein the tubular wall is filled with a rigid material of either frozen water or formed-in-place plastic foam and thus provides a support system for a plastic sheet that is either clipped or integrally fastened, and intended only to hold or contain water. If the sheet in Vickery, or the flaps in Nail, were to be removed, the rigid quality or the weightlessness of the respective walls would not prevent runoff losses and any such runoff water could of course not be available to percolate into the desired area. In Laudry, de Pous, and Eymard, the inventions are essentially one piece containments that could not easily be pierced or placed around a tree without being split and thus destroying the integrity and purpose of the inventions. In addition, the remaining floor covering of the now split inventions could only inhibit any desired percolation of the irrigation water.
Additional prior art having to do with some type of control of water dam, Serota (U.S. Pat. No. 3,213,628) describing a water filled plastic dam structure; Guazinotti (U.S. Pat. No. 3,855,800) with an inflatable barrier for watercourses; Fish (U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,995) showing a portable dam; Muramatsu (U.S. Pat. No. 4,330,224) describing a collapsible rubber dam; Wagner et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,433) showing a flood disaster bag; and Muramatsu (U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,810) again with a collapsible rubber dam.
Serota offers a plurality of filled containers stacked horizontally to be used like bricks in a construction for damming a watercourse. Even if reduced in scale, they would not provide the same continuity of sealing and would be time consuming in emptying to avoid handling the weight during the repeated transit of our applications. Guazinotti contemplates a filled diverter that is used in controlling or preventing erosion in a watercourse and whose improvements are anchors and fastening techniques to deal with the watercourse's dynamic energies. Fish's portable dam offers a combination of posts as a backdrop to fabric to deal with the forces of a waterway and has no inflatable elements. Both Muramatsu inventions teach in other areas and involve the raising and lowering of a collapsible dam for rivers wherein the dam height is controlled by an improved positioning of supply and discharge conduits with check valves. Wagner contemplates individual inflatable and linkable flood or barrier bags with clips, rings and fill valves that teach away from the simplicity and improved sealing and containment qualities of the present invention.
In brief review, prior art in common use today faces many problems: Evaporation and runoff; restrictive inside diameters and weight of hoses; long distances to traverse and adequacy or availability of water sources; and significant time, strength, and stamina requirements for personnel under difficult working conditions.
An important number of these problems have been addressed and obviated in a novel manner by the present invention, which additionally allows the supply and accurate placement of large quantities of water in a significantly frugal and conservation-oriented fashion that is now more critically important than ever in a nation faced with dwindling water resources and periodic seriously adverse weather conditions.